Agricutural change in the Uluguru mountains during the colonial period, with particular emphasis from 1945-1960.

The study revealed that the changes took place in agriculture and in other aspects of social life in the Uluguru Mountains during the colonial period greatly contributed to the underdevelopment of the region. Although Uluguru is not among the most impoverished zones of the country its level of “development” is far below the discernable potentiality of the area. Here is a region with some of the highest figures of rainfall in the country and an abundance of perennial streams running along fertile alluvial valleys where a variety of crops could be produced all the year around. We have tried to demonstrate in this short study that the factors of production in the Uluguru have either remained untapped or more particularly they have been perversely utilized. Central to the history of the Uluguru during the colonial period is a growing trend toward increased impoverishment of the majority of the peasantry in the area.The underdevelopment of the interplay of two major related factors. There is firstly the urge for raw materials as the most important aim of colonization. The British colonial administrators did not find in the Uluguru a source of a strategic raw material for the metropolitan manufacturing industry. What was of interest in the area was the fact that it was the source of major perennial streams which were vital for the operation of the sisal industry down on the law-lands as well as providing most of the water requirements for the capital town of Dar es Salaam. As a result of occupying such as position in relation to a sector which was considered the backbone of the territorial economy, the Uluguru featured prominently in the colonial programme of conservation. So much time was wasted in implementing a fruitless projects. Peasants were detracted from their normal productive pursuits in their fields and the colonial administration did not offer any advantageous methods of land utilization. Ironically, however the tribulations which came about as a result of the colonial enforcement of agricultural change made the peasants band together and act as a class in opposing major colonial policy. The peasants succeeded in stopping an obnoxious scheme, after which the colonial administration gradually paid less attention to the region. But by this time the colonial system had already set in motion institutional trends which were self propelling and therefore the tribulations experienced by the ordinary peasants continued to increase rather than diminish.